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LED Clay Ornament

Just got a Grove - Mixer Pack in hand. So I want to make some simple ornament with it. It's a pack of a number of functional modular circuits. You can use them to construct a circuit safely, a perfect pack for science education. In this project, I used some super light clay. Super light clay is such a lightweight material and very easy to shape. It solidifies with the loss of the contained water. One of my favorite material.

Step 1: Partlist & How It Works

The circuit inside is built up by things listed below:

1. Grove - Coin Battery Power

2. Grove - Branch

3. Grove - Slide

4. Grove - LED x 2

5. Some Grove cables

All these stuff can be found in the Grove - Mixer Pack.

The schematic diagram of this project is shown in pic 2. Follow the diagram to connect the modules. Check if it works. You can make many other circuits after familiar with all the mixer modules.

Step 2: Build Up the Circuit

After you connect all the Grove modules together. Supply power to it and check whether it's functional.

I tested once as pic 1. When I slid the slide from left to right, two LEDs lit up gradually. Perfect, just what I expected.

After that, we need to turn them into one block, the bone of this project, before we coat them with super light clay.

Some tips for that:

1. Double side adhesive tape(the one I used is shown in pic 2) is very sticky. It's a good material to joint stuff but If you want a neat surface of all Grove modules, I suggest you to cover their surface first with clear scotch tape. As I did in pic 3.

2. There are Grove cables of two lengths in the Mixer package, 5cm and 20cm. Find the right spec to construct the block.

After some put-and-stick work, I made the bone of this project as pic 5.

OK, let's dress it up!

Step 3: Design an Outfit

This is the most interesting step and cost most time.

I want to make it a cloud and stars. So I chose clay of blue, white and yellow. Glue and some tools might be useful.

Then I started to roll some balls. It's not necessary to make a ball with 100% super light clay. A way to save you some clay is shown in pic 2. Rub a ball with some paper. And then coat it with our clay. The surface is rugged after you add some pieces of clay to it. You can smooth it out by rounding it over and over again.

As you have some balls, time to attach them to "the bone". I cut a paper tape to cover "the bone". In that way, clay balls can attach to it easier. The paper tape is shown in pic 3. You can find what it would look like after dress up the paper tape in pic 4.

Make one ball, make one more and again make one more. I attached quite a lot balls to the bone and I got a vivid cloud in pic 5.

After adding two stars to emphasize the LEDs. I got the lovely craft in pic 6.